Create Refreshing Views – Garden Design 101!

We’re not apt to think how our gardens can work for us, the way our home offices and kitchens do.  Your garden can refresh your mind and cut your stress levels just as it can make you healthier and happier by being a source of fresh vegetables that brighten your meals.

The most refreshing gardens to see from the windows of your home, or to encounter when you step outside, are reminiscent of temperate meadows on lovely Spring days—and mental refreshment is crucial in the lives of modern humans because when we’re exhausted by focusing on the details of our lives, by doing knowledge work, not only does our mental and creative performance degrade, we also get grumpy.  After we refresh, we can concentrate again, get done well what we must, and we stop snapping at each other.  Our minds do their best work, insuring we succeed cognitively and socially.

Refreshing spaces/views contain field-like areas (areas with grasses, mown or not) and trees bunched several together in clumps.  Those trees are best leafy not spikey, which is also true of the plants in a space.  The whole “composition” is arranged like one of Bert’s drawings in a Mary Poppins movie, so that it seems we could step right into the scene, without burrowing through a hedge or hurtling over a stream, for example.  When we look at our garden space it needs to seem to possess protected spaces (seats with our backs against trees at the top of gently rolling terrain so we have a view of the world around us from a safe place, for instance)—we feel best when our nature gives us a view of the nearby world from a place where we feel safe.

When you are developing outdoor green spaces, acknowledge local conditions and use green leafy plants likely to be found in the area whenever you can.  Garden spaces that seem like “optimized” local areas are not only often a more sustainable choice, but they also are the most psychologically restorative.  For best results also include the largest number of different plants that is feasible given your budget, gardening time, etc.

Seeing flowers makes our stress levels plummet and when our stress levels are lower we’re both happier and healthier (one of the reasons it’s such a good idea to bring flower gifts to people who are not feeling their best) and they also really effectively help us recover our ability to concentrate—but views that refresh don’t have to be packed with flowers as long as featured plants are green and leafy with arching branches.

We always get a positive psychological charge from seeing gently moving water, perhaps it reminds the primordial self buried deep within each of us that we have access to probably potable water and likely will make it through at least the next few of our days in relative comfort.  Burbling brooks (real or replications) meandering across a garden or reproduced in a natural seeming pool make us feel good, whether we’re standing beside them or viewing them through a window.

Use wood and other natural materials to build in your garden whenever you can—no steel, etc., please—as looking at natural materials in gardens (say wood furniture, for example), has been shown to be more refreshing than seeing areas with other materials (metal furniture, for instance).

If you can’t create a garden, try getting together a window box or organizing plantings on your balcony, they can also help you feel and be good—and give us the psychological boost, sense of accomplishment, of bringing plants in nature into our lives in not easy ways.

Even a window box not feasible?  Encourage buildings near you to be good neighbors and to plant green roofs for the people who use spaces in their structures and others nearby to enjoy.  The best green roofs are reminiscent of meadows/prairies.

For all too many of us, our gardens can not be at their absolute best all year long.  So—photograph them when they shine and post your images throughout your home—those pictures will keep your brain in tip top shape even when your actual garden is at its lowest ebb.

Another option: video your garden and show your videos on the various screens when the plants and animals in your garden are taking refuge from harsh conditions.  Also, a few seconds staring at a video or a still photograph can refresh us in a time efficient way when getting out to the garden or even visiting a window will take too much time, divert too many of our remaining mental resources from the task at hand.

Your garden can work hard for you all year round—plant it, visit it, photo/video it—even if your “garden” is actually a part of a balcony or a window box.  Outside nature is good for us, whether we can step out into it or only visit it with our eyes.